Because of the high cost of gasoline, Sal Rubio, 21, occasionally puts cheaper E85 fuel into his 1985 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. Rubio said his car runs rough but has not displayed major problems from the cheaper fuel.

Sal Rubio knows it’s not good for his car, but he has had enough of high gas prices. So he occasionally pumps E85 into his dark-blue 1985 Oldsmobile Cutlass – a car meant to burn only gasoline.

With E85 cheaper by as much as 80 cents per gallon, Denver mechanics have noticed more customers bringing in gas-only cars with problems caused by filling up with the blend of 85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline.

Mechanics said they have not seen major engine damage to cars, but that could change as E85 becomes more popular and more stations offer the fuel blend.

“All I’ve seen is nuisance stuff, like hard starts. But we haven’t seen the destruction that I expect to see two years down the road,” said Mark Sutherland, staff foreman for the Mike Shaw Chevrolet/Buick/Saab dealership in Denver.

Sutherland estimates he has seen about 30 cases of E85 in gas-only cars in 18 months.

Mechanics said they have not seen a car needing new parts, but they usually drain the gas tank to prevent further damage, which costs about $300 in labor. With continued use, owners could see serious engine damage, running up a repair bill of as much as $6,000.

Cars not adapted for E85 can misfire, which sends the unused, 1,000-degree ethanol down the tailpipe. Repeated misfires could eventually burn holes in the engine’s pistons.

Repeated misfires also could melt spark plugs and liquefy the ceramic brick common on catalytic converters. If the converter becomes completely blocked, serious engine damage ensues. But engine damage is practically impossible after one fill-up of E85, mechanics said.

Use in the shorter term has the potential to corrode rubber seals in the car’s fuel lines or damage the fuel pumps.

Rubio said his car runs rough but has not seen major problems.

Older cars such as his might have fewer problems with E85 because they use carburetors instead of fuel injectors, said Mike Hesskamp, drivability technician for Mike Naughton Ford in Aurora.

The average price of E85 in Colorado was $2.56 per gallon versus $3.15 for regular unleaded gasoline this week. In Denver, E85 was going for $2.39 and regular for $3.19, according to the Colorado Corn Growers Association.

Beyond potentially expensive repair bills, burning E85 does not save as much as consumers think, since E85 offers significantly worse mileage. Consumers report about 15 to 20 percent worse gas mileage with E85, said Ron Lamberty, vice president of market development for the American Coalition for Ethanol, a South Dakota-based advocacy group.

And ethanol has its dissenters. Some think tanks, such as the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, question ethanol’s benefits and blame it for raising food prices.

While commercials tout E85’s environmental benefits, putting the fuel in a car not properly equipped harms the environment more than burning regular gas.

Car computers aim to burn gas at an ideal air-to-gas ratio of 14.7 to 1, which would produce only carbon dioxide, oxygen and nitrogen. Since changing speeds make perfect conversion impossible, the car also emits trace amounts of toxic carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and carcinogenic hydrocarbons.

Putting E85 in a car with a computer not set up to recognize ethanol and burn it at the right ratio will throw off this conversion process and cause the car to pump more toxics into the air.

Since ethanol burns cleaner than gasoline, it does produce fewer toxics if used in flex-fuel vehicles. And because E85 uses recycled carbon dioxide from corn, it is widely viewed as more greenhouse-gas-friendly than gasoline, which burns carbon stored underground.

Lamberty said consumers should not put E85 in cars not properly equipped but said mixtures with up to 30 percent of ethanol have little to no negative effects.

Most car manuals allow up to 10 percent ethanol, and regular gasoline at many stations has about 5 percent ethanol.

Dean Benson, a cashier at Silco Conoco – Denver’s only E85 station – said he sees up to 30 people a day fill up with E85 in cars not meant for it.

“A lot of people will put it in anything just because of the price. I don’t even bother telling them (it’s bad for their car) anymore,” Benson said.

The popularity of E85 has led some mechanics to start offering conversion kits. By adding a sensor, the kits can alter how the car burns fuel based on the amount of ethanol.

Steve Griboski, owner of the Maintenance Shoppe in Denver, has just started testing conversion kits and expects to begin selling them soon at $750 for a four-cylinder engine.

A study on social media use released earlier this month found that people who spent excessive time on Facebook also made riskier decisions -- performing as poorly in a famous psychological test as people dependent on substances such as cocaine or heroin.

Amazon is planning to use its massive cloud computing service to jump into the streaming market for video game play, according to a new report from the Information. The service, which could potentially bring top-notch titles to virtually anyone with a smartphone or streaming device, could make Amazon a major competitor in the space already in play by Microsoft and...